Axis History Forum

This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations and related topics hosted by the Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Christian Ankerstjerne’s Panzerworld and Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day.
Founded in 1999.

David Welch's Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945 is an excellent study not just of feature films but also "documentaries" such as the Eternal Jew, Feuertaufe, and the weekly newsreels, the Wochenschau. There's a section too on Kolberg, with analysis of some of the dialogue.

The author examines the design and construction details of the various buildings at the concentration camp but it's not a diatribe on Germans nor does he pass judgement and allows the reader to examine what remained of the complex after the War. It also involves problems and testimony given at the Nuremburg trials and how they related to the architecture, building documents and construction receipts. Fascinating

The Pressac book is a leading source but I do not think of it as a truly architectural book. It is more of a technical and industrial study -- maybe the best on the subject.

This is not splitting hairs, because architecture is the crossing of buildings' aesthetics and function. At one end of the field, architects design for users' appeal. At another end, they make statements for the world to see and for posterity to remember. Neither widely applied to death camp construction, especially for a genocide program placed behind security.

It may have been in Yitzhak Arad's study of the Operation Reinhard death camps, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, where a Nazi officer has the opinion that, instead of hiding their deeds, there should be great monuments to it. There was no such thing of course. But in an unthinkable historical chance, that is one place architecture would have been applied to genocide.

Pressac began as a Holocaust doubter and ended up one of its leading technical historians. Popular doubt is also well-covered in his book, which is heavy and oddly-shaped, about 30cm high and 45cm long -- probably the better for its large plans and diagrams. It won't stand up normally on a shelf so it has to lie flat. The on-line files say that print copies have reportedly priced at a thousand dollars but I cannot imagine that, having seen it for about $30.

Does anyone know of any book on Reich architecture in terms of residental structures? As a hobby I am a student of residential architecture or private dwellings, but I know of no books on this subject, and only very few from the original period.